(no subject)

I wrote a big long post today, which I'm going to break into sections about how school and things are going, and about my personal life. Here's the one about school and things!

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Much like yesterday, I have some time to sit and breathe today. It's a really pleasant feeling.

I got up at seven this morning in the interest of finally being together enough to take advantage of warm weather and commute to school by bicycle. I wanted to give myself plenty of extra time, so in light of the Google-provided estimation of 40 minutes, I gave myself an hour and a half. It actually took me 45, so I locked my bike up and sat down on a bench between two of the buildings on campus. I rested and enjoyed the early morning pre-rain feel of the air.

I'm planning to make a habit of this. For a long time, I've wanted to get up earlier in general to have more leisurely mornings and for it to not be so much of a stretch when I want to get up at dawn to photograph something in really good light. The physical activity of pedaling to school along with time to passively enjoy myself in the morning has lead to me feeling really mentally good all day.

With finals coming up very soon now, I'm feeling pretty confident about everything with the possible exception of Spanish. I went to class this morning at 9, and then asked my professor if I could sit in on the next session at 10, which she graciously consented to. I think more than anything else, what I need to get better at Spanish is consistent exposure to it. I felt good about sitting through mostly the same lessons a second time to solidify it in my head. Then at 11, four out of the five people in my own class (it's small because of the early hour, and that's kind of nice) got together to go over the practice questions for the oral part of the final exam. Then, tomorrow at 11, I'll be studying the same questions with a group including people from the 10 o' clock class, at least one of whom I was in class with last semester. More practice is good.

Beyond that, I've used yesterday and today to do a lot of studying with some online verb conjugation trainers. I think that's been really productive too, and I'm going to get back to more of that after writing here. There are so many odd and irregular preterite forms (the simple past tense) of verbs to learn that they're kind of intimidating, but I think repetition is helping them settle into my brain. I'll be doing a lot of that in the next few weeks, along with using other tools I've found online like some reading comprehension exercises. I want to do really well on this final if I can.

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It's kind of amazing to me that school is going to be over for the Spring so soon. I perceive the semesters to be going much faster than they did the first time I was in college, ten or so years ago. I guess that's a fairly universal experience. I do worry a little about the quickening perception of passing time; it's one of the reasons I want to keep doing new things and make moments stand out. I don't want to get caught in too much of a routine.

As I noted, I have classes settled on for the next year. 17 credits instead of 16 is a little intimidating, but I haven't had trouble so far so I expect that will continue. It's not like I'm taking more than 20, which I know some people do. Save the math class (I'm afraid I'm just not of the mindset who can get super-excited about a math class), they're all classes that I expect to be really interesting, and the majority of them are directly relevant to my ultimate research and career interests. I'm pretty excited about Fall and starting school again.

Meanwhile, it seems pretty certain that I've secured employment for the Summer at the campus help desk! I haven't done tech support since getting laid off early last year, and in fact, I've kind of avoided dealing with computers any more than I've had to. I was really tired of the things. But this makes a lot of sense as a way to leverage an existing skillset into providing an income at a place where my employers will be very understanding about an academic schedule. It also pays slightly higher than minimum wage at $8/hr, which is nice. Before interviewing and being given the relevant paperwork to fill out by my prospective new boss, I also got a call back from a resumé I'd dropped off at Dollar Tree, so I'm feeling employable. *smiles* I'm a little worried about not having personal experience with Windows 7, and being a bit rusty in general, but I believe I'll get back in the swing of things quickly enough to be productive. I hope so anyway!

(no subject)

I wrote a big long post today, which I'm going to break into sections about how school and things are going, and about my personal life. Here's the one about my personal life!

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Things are going so well in my personal life! I often feel rather less talkative than I'd ideally like to be at home, and that's largely due to school stress. I feel a little bad about that. But yesterday, before going upstairs to disappear into my study (that is, my little bedroom strewn with various possessions that I study in before collapsing into bed), I spent a while chatting with my parents. That was nice. I feel a little bit out of touch with what's been going on with both them and my brother sometimes, considering I live in the same house with them.

My love life is pretty great! I love two wonderful women who are very different but who both make me really happy. Danae is going to be moving to Chicago to start school soon, which will make it even easier for me to visit both she and my sweetie Lisa who will be living in the same city, and not unreasonably far from each other. I'll miss seeing her current housemates as much, 'cause they rule. But I won't miss the gas and time spent traveling frequently to Aurora. I'm looking forward to spending quite a lot of time in Chiacago, with one or the other of them, because I really do love being in the city.

There's even been a little discussion here and there about the possibility of Danae and I sharing living space. I think it's safe to say that she and I are looking at our relationship as a pretty permanent thing, and we'd like to see how well living together would work. At this point though, that's outside the immediate next few years. She's going to be living and learning in Chicago, and after next year I'm hoping to move to Madison to finish the second two years of my undergrad degree at a more prestigious school than UWP. So it's not something we've talked about in any detail, simply because it's not something that can happen any time soon. And that's ok. To be honest, I'm really excited too about the idea of living in Madison; I've never gone away to school before.

Parkside, and its faculty, are really great! And my advisor here has suggested that being in Madison will actually result in fewer opportunities to do the kind of independent work and research I might be able to do here with smaller classes and more individualized attention. But she also agrees with me that, if I want to go to grad school, a degree from Madison is better than one from Parkside.

My advisor also told me that she thinks I'm intelligent enough to succeed there, a compliment that really made me glow. She and I are going to get together some time over the Summer to talk in more general terms about why I want to pursue anthropology, what I want to get out of it, and the kinds of ways to go about that. That should be a really enlightening and productive conversation, and I feel complimented as well in her being willing to spend some time in discussion with me.

So anyway, my relationships are truly wonderful. I kind of think about the idea of having a biologically male play partner once in a while, but as well as having no time for such things, I guess I also wouldn't really know how to go about finding one. Though I feel like I've taken a bit more control over my romantic life lately, in the past I often just sort of happened into relationships I think. That lead to things both good and bad. It feels good to actually decide that I'm interested in someone and actively express that to them as the initiating party, but I think I've only really done that once.

This is also the first time I've been in a stable, actively poly relationship wherein I've felt pretty confident about it being ok for me to seek other partners, for either casual play or relationships. (Or friendship too, of course. That would be nice, and some of these lines are blurry.) It's a really good feeling. Have I written here about the time that Danae and I were at a convention and she casually asked me if I'd be ok with her hooking up with someone that night? It was a question that kind of floored me. I didn't know how to respond, but not because I didn't like the idea; it was just something I hadn't been asked in that way before, by her or by my previous long-term partner. But after I processed it for a while, I realized that I was, in fact, really ok with that. And that I even liked the idea of finding someone myself. But I'm in a position where I don't quite know how to do that. I expect that, much like figuring out how to do polyamory (or monogamy, for that matter) successfully, there are major elements you just have to learn by doing. Danae is talking about us going to Madtown Kinkfest at some point; maybe that would be a venue to explore some of these things in.

I have some reservations about how well totally casual sex would work for me, but delving into that is probably another entry to be written.

(As a footnote, talking about wanting to play with a bio-male reminds me of why I identify as bisexual rather than pansexual. I'm attracted to both/all genders, and pretty well equally. But not interchangeably. It's no reflection on my current female partners, who I love and am very much attracted to. In fact, mentally and emotionally, I don't see any major difference between being involved with females, males, or people anywhere on the gender spectrum. But on a purely physical level, the idea of playing with male parts is sometimes really appealing. I feel like pansexuality has a connotation of independance from biological gender that I don't have. But there's also a lot of gray area in definitions of these terms of sexual politics, so I'm pretty willing to accept most any way that people choose to define themselves.)

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I think I'll save more rambling for another entry. This one has followed a circuitous enough road already. I'm going to get back to studying Spanish. ¡Adios!